Sludge pretreatment prior to anaerobic digestion has been found to reduce sludge production in wastewater treatment. Sludge disintegration using physical, chemical, biological, or mechanical methods can increase biogas production and reduce sludge quantities. Ultrasonication is one of the most effective means of mechanical disintegration. This study aims to investigate ultrasonication as a means for solubilizing waste activated sludge (WAS) to enhance its digestability. Sonication was applied by the use of two different probes providing different powers and energies into the sludge after which the soluble chemical oxygen demand (sCOD) increases were measured.to improve biogas yield and methane content in anaerobic digestion of excess sludge from the wastewater treatment plant, the sludge was disintegrated by using various methods (sonication, alkaline and thermal treatments). Since disintegrated sludge contains a high concentration of soluble proteins, the resulting metabolite, ammonia, may inhibit methane generation. Therefore, the effects of protein removal from disintegrated sludge on methane production. As a result, an obvious enhancement of biogas generation was observed by digesting disintegrated sludge (biogas yield increased from 15 to 36 ml/g COD(added).day for the raw excess sludge and the sonicated sludge, respectively). The quality of biogas was also improved by removing proteins from the disintegrated sludge. About 50% (w/w) of soluble proteins were removed from the suspension of disintegrated sludge by salting out using 35 g MgCl(2) x 6H(2)O/l and also by isoelectric point precipitation at pH 3.3. For deproteinized sludge, methane production increased by 19%, and its yield increased from 145 ml/g COD(removed) to 325 ml/g COD(removed). Therefore, the yield and quality of biogas produced from digestion of excess sludge can be enhanced by disintegrating the sludge and subsequent protein removal.The type of fermentation and the reactor are important criteria involved in biomethanation of different substrates. If the total solid concentration is maintained well below 10% and in presence of activators such as Ca &/ Mg highest methane production is possible. If kitchen wastes or such inputs are used along with cattle dung, their concentration should be less than 20% and the materials should be subjected for predigestion under aerobic condition in order to enhance the production of fatty acids. different permutations shall give promising output.During an efficient biogas production, a maximized reduction of volatile solids (VS) and methane production should ideally be obtained at the highest possible organic load. This means an optimization of the utilization of both the organic material and the reactor volume available. To achieve these goals key process parameters such as pH and concentrations of fermentation products (mainly addressed by following the volatile fatty acids VFAs) need to be maintained within appropriate ranges. The pH of the biogas process is mainly governed by carbonate/bicarbonate buffering, which, in turn, to a great extent is affected by the release, formation and consumption of ammonia and VFAs, and the release of sulfide formed from sulfate and sulfite . Thus, the nitrogen and sulfur contents of the substrate can be important factors to obtain the buffering capacity required to maintain a stable pH at varying substrate composition and VFA concentrations but at the same time avoiding process disturbances due to interactions of high concentrations of ammonium and sulfide.
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Thanks Dr. Saravanamuttu Subramaniam Sivakumar and Dr. Prem Baboo for sharing those useful information. Searching more and more to find balanced synthetic microbial nutrient supplement for anaerobic digestion of wastewater. I want to make sure that the nutrient supplement is well balanced so that there won't be any nutrient deficiency during my experiments.